Tag: penguins

Mark Waghorn, writing for The London Economic, and based on a paper on Magellanic penguins published in the January edition of Current Biology, gives us access to some fascinating facts about this breed which is most common along the Atlantic Patagonia coast and the Falkland Islands.

Perhaps fittingly the King Penguin was chosen as number one in the Falkland Islands Tourist Board’s (FITB) 7 Wonders of the Falklands survey. Over the last three months FITB has asked past and present visitors to the Islands, as well as residents, what they would consider to be their seven wonders.

The Falkland Islands have warned that a million penguins are at risk from a funding black hole caused by Britain’s exit from the European Union. The Islands rely on European conservation projects to care and protect the penguin colonies, rookeries, in its shores. But with the U.K. fast approaching Brexit Day in March 2019, Falklands' lawmaker Teslyn Barkman has urged clarity on the future of Islands’ flippered friends.

April 25th is “World Penguin Day”, undoubtedly the world’s most popular bird – think of Happy Feet, March of the Penguins, Pingu just to name a few uses in popular culture. These charismatic flightless birds are funny to watch on land but are graceful and rapid in water. They occur only in the seas of the Southern hemisphere; there are seventeen species of penguin ranging from the Galapagos to Antarctica.

Global warming is on track to wipe out 70% of the world's King penguins by century's end, putting the regal birds on a path towards extinction, researchers warned on Monday. As climate change drives away the fish and squid upon which the flightless creatures depend, the penguins must swim further afield to find sustenance for their hungry hatchlings on land.

Penguins can taste only sour and salty food, scientists have discovered. A genetic study suggests the flightless birds lost three of the five basic tastes long ago in evolution. Taste is critical for survival in most animals, but may not matter in the penguin, which swallows fish whole, say researchers in China and the US.

The loveable same-sex pair of endangered African penguins at the Toronto Zoo with a high international have been separated from each other by their handlers and paired up with females as part of a species survival program.

The recent discovery of dead Magellan penguins in several beaches of Uruguay’s eastern coast can’t be attributed to intoxication, “but rather natural causes”, said Daniel Gilardoni head of the Uruguay’s Natural Aquatic Resources Administration, Dinara.